Sunday, 27 July 2008

Yesterday I came by a free pair of tweed trousers, and I have named them the Asspirational Pants. This, because for them - or me - to sit comfortably, their size relative to that of my noble posterior (or "ass", as they say in the land of Thoreau and Plath) has to change. Today I discovered a reliable source of vegan tiramisu biscuits (they're also gluten-free, if that interests anyone). I think it's clear that my noble posterior ain't going nowhere. Nurse Pattison, hand me my seam-letting gadgetry.

Thursday, 24 July 2008

It's the 24th day of July, 24/7, and I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that we owe the seven day week to God. (And Judaism, bless it.) What, on the other hand, has Niche ever done for us by way of convenient time divisions? Eh, Niche? What?

Wednesday, 23 July 2008

I've just glanced down at the ingredients list on tonight's prefabricated soy nugget package, and it appears that I have ingested a hearty dose of Rhizopus Oligosporus. I knew there was a reason for sticking to lentils.

Monday, 21 July 2008

As I let myself in an hour ago, X from next door scampered out of the cold cold night and into my (comparatively) warm warm flat. (Emma and Erin, who dropped by for breakfast on Saturday, suggested X might be called Janet, with a Wellingtonian accent, thus Jenut, so hinceforth, X wull be known es Janet-pronounced-Jenut.) Jenut hes been mountaineering over end through my furniture iver sunce she slupped un. Ectually, she's just made a nist un thus morning's bath towel, but before thet she was doing ixtraordinary cellusthinuc manouevres on top of the bookshelf. I'd be iver so heppy for Jenut to sleep over, only I don't want to make Her Nixt Door jilous, or worried, or whusker-diprived. Her Nixt Door hes a fraught rilationshup with Hum Nixt Door, end I suspict Jenut may be the one beam of sunlight un en otherwise binighted life. (I em basing thus observation, your Honour, on en argumint I heard through the wall two weeks ago.) Uf I put Jenut beck outside, I wull be diposuting her straight unto the maws of Siberia, which nonsinsucal mitaphor us to say: the rain ut raineth, cold and frostily.

Friday, 18 July 2008

Wednesday, 16 July 2008

As my first houseguest at Harlot Heights, X (I didn't quite catch her name) enjoyed certain privileges, viz., scratching the armchair, sitting on the bookshelf, licking a blob of mushroom risotto on the kitchen floor, privileges that will not (I repeat, not) be extended to future visitors. Pipped at the post, comrades. Sorry about that.

Monday, 14 July 2008

One of the manifold delights of Harlot Heights is that it's 45 minutes by foots from kitchen to office. I canter across the Big, Bad Road, and then amble down the hill past Prestonian rose gardens, then amble some more through the badlands of Reservoir, then amble up along Darebin Creek, over a bridge, round a lake, across an oval, through a tunnel, until - ta da! - the Ivory Tower riseth before me, dew-bespangled and beige-bricked in the morning sun.

This morning the school kiddies had school, for the first time since Harlot Heights and I joined forces. And thus the lolly-pop lady. The lolly-pop lady is as tall as my armpits and as old as my Great Aunt Gerty and she wears a fluorescent yellow jacket and a white hat. She stood by her crossing, watching me amble down the street, portmanteau on back, spectacles on nose, rubber soles beneath my feet. She saw me and she thought, "Now here's a young ducky who doesn't know one end of a horseless carriage from t'other", and she pluckily marched out into the street brandishing her lolly-pop stop sign. She stopped traffic. Just for me. And then she said, "Have a good day, love."

If you thought Girlfriend mag peddled some of the most inane piffle in the history of tweenagehood, you would be correct. Here is your A+; the medal's in the post.

Many are the questions one might table for the contemporary adolescent's attention: chess club or recorder consort? which flies faster, a peregrin falcon or a Boeing 747? if your school were to stage a play about the Periodic Table, which element's part would you audition for?

Does Girlfriend put any of these questions? Does it? DOES IT? No. It does not. It is too busy expatiating upon the hawtness of Keira Knightley's boyfiend, the apparent necessity of bringing to one's formal an ipod, a small mirror, a kiwi-and-mango exfoliating scrub and the Hello Kitty collectors' edition of Das Kapital - it is too busy, I say, - asking "Are you a BINGE thinker?" (l'horreur!) to ask the questions that matter. Like: if "seven dog years equal one human year", when should beagles get the vote? I mean, really, these people are the legislators of tomorrow; we need them to start thinking about the issues now.

As for binge thinking, what, I ask you, is the point of parodying a magazine that dismantles its own credibility with such dizzying skill? Gels, do not, I implore you, do not think. It callouses the elbows so. And does terrible things to the bikini line.

Wednesday, 9 July 2008

I've never been to a Tupperware party, partly because I don't trust a product that specialises in marital aids for sheep, and partly because there are only so many airtight plastic containers a baron and amateur philatelist needs. I like the concept, though: if Tupperware parties were two-chocolates-for-the-price-of-one parties, or bagpipe appliance purchasing parties, or turquoise long john parties, I'd be in like Finn. (Flynn? Pnin? Whoever it was who was in.)

While we're talking communal japes with a consumerist twist, cast your een over this fine proposition, clipped from my local paper:

Headlice removal in your home! Discount for groups of three or more! If this doesn't lead to the rise and rise of Friday evening delousing parties, complete with canapes, then I'll eat my gnat.

Friday, 4 July 2008

I can't think of anything much more self-indulgent than posting photos of my spinster pad, but this is a blog, afterall. Self-indulgent is its middle name. And so, budding interior decorologists and turquoisophiles, girls and boys, step this way. I present to you "Harlot Heights", forty-nine square metres of dubiously-financed manor house.

Thursday, 3 July 2008

Lucy Tartan's recently republished Giant Spider Pictorial reminded me of the fine feathered fly I met last summer. To those who doubt reports of steroid-abuse in the fly community, I say: that is my finger; I was there; there is no photoshoddery going on here; that fly really is as big as my distal phalanx.*

It is for reasons such as these - invertebrates on androgens - that I can truly say I am glad that I signed up for karate classes. I may be congenitally uncoordinated, unfit and inflexible, I may lack martial spirit and whatever it is that enables a person to ensure that the two ends of her belt are of equal length, but by golly, the next time a fly like this swings my way, I'm going to have the best bowing technique in town.

Meanwhile, it appears that the internet and I have been reunited, and I promised photeaux of mine house. I reiterate that promise. There will be photos of mine house (awright, my two rooms), I promise.

About Me

Alexis, Baron von Harlot, is self-appointed Chronicler Laureate to the principality of Lalor, Victoria, Australia, including the lesser adjoining suburbs of Epping and Thomastown, and wherever she happens to be, really. These annals relay her keenly observed observations on matters floral, faunal, anthropological, protozoic, and thingy, with reference to the backyard, down the road, geopolitics, and the complete works of Jeanette Winterson.